1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network communication apparatus having a function of communicating with other devices via a network, an image forming apparatus, a method of controlling the network communication apparatus, and a program for making a computer function as the network communication apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been conventionally proposed to decrease power consumption of a network communication apparatus having a function of communicating with other devices via a network, by decreasing a communication speed of the apparatus at the time of shifting to an energy-saving mode.
This technique is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-154763, for example.
However, according to an energy-saving communication apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-154763, at the time of shifting to an energy-saving mode, only an instruction to decrease the speed of communicating with an external device is written in a speed-setting internal register. According to this method, however, at the time of actually communicating with another device, the communication apparatus becomes in a state of a connection failure, if the communication speed of the other device remains unchanged. Therefore, the communication apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-154763 has the problem that the communication speed cannot be properly changed at the time of shifting to the energy-saving mode.